Your chock-full-of-MP3s PC sits here, your stereo with the awesome speakers stands over there. How to get music from point A to point B without running those annoying (and perhaps treacherous) wires through the house? Thankfully, the intriguing new Motorola Simplefi appliance ($379 direct) lets you do it wirelessly and effortlesslysort of. You will find half a dozen rough edges that might not be in a second version a year from now.

Simplefi uses software developed by Simple Devices. The Simplefi unit, which Motorola builds and calls a "wireless digital audio receiver," fetches MP3s and Internet audio from your PC and does any decoding. The device still needs a traditional stereo receiver, though, to amplify the audio, adjust volume levels, and tune in traditional radio broadcasts.

At the PC end, you load Simplefi software to categorize your music, and you attach a USB-based wireless transceiver running HomeRF. (That's right, HomeRFthe wireless protocol that has been trampled and left for dead by the popularity of wireless Ethernet and Bluetooth.) Anywhere up to 150 feet and several rooms away, you connect the 2- by 11- by 6-inch (HWD) Simplefi receiver to an unused input on your stereo receiver.

A 12-button remote unsnaps from the front of the Simplefi receiver, which has a three-line LCD. Using the remote, you navigate among Simplefi's channels, playlists, and tracksthe interface is essentially a three-tier structure for organizing your music in manageable chunks. One button, called TagIt!, provides information on the performer once you're back on your PCBritney bios, Britney concert dates in your area, Britney T-shirts for sale. It could be useful, or it could be one more revenue stream for Motorola to milk. SimpleFi comes bundled with two (currently) free online services, Live365 and MP3.com, and is in the process of adding the Full Audio pay service, but pricing hasn't been set.

Once you've got it working, Simplefi delivers on its claimsfor the most part. The music moves without a hitch from PC to Simplefi receiver to audio receiver. In hours of listening, we seldom heard an audible hiccup, and neither will you, considering that bandwidth contention from other HomeRF devices is unlikely. (You could, however, overload the USB bus if it's also being used simultaneously by a printer or scanner.)

Our concerns about the first iteration of Simplefi are many but minor. None are showstoppers. It's MP3-onlyno WMA, although that could be fixed with a firmware download. We had trouble installing the Simplefi software on one PC. This occurred when the PC's existing Ethernet card and the HomeRF adapter both tried to dynamically grab IP addresses (you remedy that by assigning a static, or fixed, address to one). After completing the install on one Windows Me PC, Norton Utilities' virus scanning didn't work, but we couldn't duplicate the problem on other PCs or notebooks.

You still need separate MP3-ripping software, such as MusicMatch, and juggling the two makes you wonder if the future doesn't lie in a single program that integrates both functions. You use the Simplefi appliance buttons/remote to pull musicthe PC's Simplefi software doesn't push the music. This is unfortunate because the remote and moderate-contrast three-line display simply aren't as nimble as a PC display. Giving the Simplefi receiver the ability to use a nearby TV set as an optional display would have been nice. And the remote would have benefited from a volume control so you wouldn't have to juggle Simplefi and AV remotes at your armchair.

Is Simplefi for you? It could be if you're an early adopter and MP3 music buff with a PC that is far from your audio receiverand if you're dexterous with remotes. Others may want to wait for the features to solidify and the price to go down or for this capability to be built into a traditional receiver. (Motorola entered the stereo receiver business this year; its DCP501 and DCP503 receive digital cable and play MP3 CDs, but can't directly decode other MP3 files.) A wireless Ethernet version might be more suitable than HomeRF, especially as a companion to all the notebooks with built-in wireless Ethernet.

Simplefi Your Digital Music

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About the Author

Bill Howard is the editor of TechnoRide.com, the car site for tech fans, and writes a column on car technology for PC Magazine each issue. He is also a contributing editor of PC Magazine.
Bill's articles on PCs, notebooks, and printers have been cited five times in the annual Computer Press Association Awards. He was named as one of the industr... See Full Bio

Simplefi Your Digital Music

Simplefi Your Digital Music

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